


we looked at each other the same way then

by lazulisong



Category: Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: Cologne, Gen, M/M, Scents & Smells
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-05
Updated: 2014-07-05
Packaged: 2018-02-07 14:38:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1902765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazulisong/pseuds/lazulisong
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve genuinely doesn't know what's worse: that someone had recorded what cologne he had worn on the possibly three occasions he had bothered to wear it, or that a company thought it would be profitable to specially manufacture a supply of it for him.</p>
<p>It's not that he doesn't appreciate the gesture. It's more that it reminds him of everything he lost in the ice.</p>
            </blockquote>





	we looked at each other the same way then

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to all of the usual suspects, especially Verity. I tried to get this done yesterday but I had to go to work and then I was weak and fell asleep at midnight after the SOUND OF FREEDOM faded from my neighborhood. It was nothing but the rockets' red flare for like five hours last night.

Steve genuinely doesn't know what's worse: that someone had recorded what cologne he had worn on the possibly three occasions he had bothered to wear it, or that a company thought it would be profitable to specially manufacture a supply of it for him.

It's not that he doesn't appreciate the gesture. It's more that it reminds him of everything he lost in the ice.

"Maybe it was a favor," says Stark, like he's personally insulted that Steve thinks that large multi-national corporations are unlikely to be doing something purely out of the goodness of their collective hearts.

Steve just stares at him.

"Okay, maybe you have a point, I'll make Pepper do something. She's very scary," Stark explains, with the look of love and terror on his face he usually gets when he talks about her. "We can get a cease and desist or something. Do you own your own copyright? I own mine. Or Pepper does, I can't be fucked to remember."

"You can't make Miss Potts do everything for me," says Steve, _again_. It's not that he misses migraines but he can always tell when he would have one, and the sensation is possibly as miserable as the actual migraine would be. It's like tensing up against a blow that never comes. 

"Yes, I can," says Stark, positive. "She likes you. You call her Miss Potts unironically and you go to museums with her." 

Steve sighs. The cologne bottle is a reproduction of the original one from 1934, except for a discreet tri-color ribbon curling around the label. It smells pretty similar, he supposes, but -- 

_"Just a little bit," says Bucky firmly. "I got you all done up and you gotta smell the right way too."_

_"I'll smell like a little kid trying to be swell like his dad, is what I'll smell like," says Steve, trying to twist away. "Lay off, Buck!"_

_"You won't smell like your da," says Bucky. "He used bay rum. This is real modern classy stuff and the dames go wild for it. Now hold still."_

_"It's not gonna work," says Steve prophetically. He holds still anyway because Bucky does smell nice when he wears it, and it's nice in a way he doesn't want to think about, Bucky's hands smoothing his hair down with brilliantine and rubbing the aftershave briskly into his skin._

_It doesn't work, of course, but Steve falls asleep without washing his face, too tired to care, and his pillow smells a little bit like Bucky for days._

"What's that face for, Cap?" says Stark. "Overcome with memories by the fragrance of the past? Remembering the ladies drawn to you by your divine smell?" 

"I didn't wear much cologne," says Steve abruptly. "A lot of it gave me headaches, before, and then during the war I didn't have any time or need to be worrying about aftershave unless I was on a press thing, so …"

Stark's eyebrows rise up. "You realize there's an actual thesis about this. Someone got an actual master's degree finding out which perfume was Captain America's personal brand of distilled essence of manly patriotism, and then they proved you smelled like that even before you went into a vat of Vita-Insta-Buff-Mite-A-Min."

"Of course I did," says Steve, suddenly irritated. "Bucky put it on me every time he thought he'd found a dame to sucker into spending five minutes with me. It was his favorite and dames loved it. On _him_. On me it smelled like - like that Axe aftershave."

"Oh," says Stark.

"Yes, 'oh'," says Steve. 

"We could tell them," says Stark. "Say thanks but no thanks but it reminds Captain America of being ninety pounds and dragged on pity dates. I bet their stock would fall thirty points," he says, brightening up. "Then I could point out to Pepper that I'm not the only one it happens to."

"It smells fine, Stark," says Steve. "It's just --" It still hurts, how different it smells in the bottle. How different it smells on his own skin, even after the serum. ""What if Miss Potts -- what if something happened to her, and one day you walked past a lady wearing the same perfume?"

"Oh," says Stark. He's quiet for thirty seconds, probably a record. "Well. That sounds. Horrible."

"It doesn't matter," says Steve. "They can have the license if they want. Just --"

"Yeah," says Stark. "What the hell, Pepper's been after me about donations again. How's the Barnes Foundation sound? MIA shit. Whatever your sad heart desires."

* * *

_"Smells nice on you," says Bucky, coming up from behind and bending his head to Steve's shoulder and sniffing exaggeratedly._

_Steve represses a shiver. He looks up at Bucky through the mirror, but Bucky has his eyes closed, and when he opens them again it's to reach around Steve and fussily arrange his tie._

_It smells better on you, Steve thinks. "You shouldn't waste it," he says instead. "Ain't gonna charm no girl into dancing with me."_

_"Never say never," says Bucky, ruffling his hair and then smoothing it straight again. "Maybe there's the right partner for you out there somewhere."_

_"Maybe," says Steve._

_Maybe._

* * *

It's probably a little weird how obsessed Bucky is with scent now, but Sam says he figures the poor son of a bitch spent seventy years smelling either nothing, cyro gas, or blood and gunpowder. If he wants to spend his days carefully sniffing his way through the fancy perfume counters at Macy's at least he's getting out in the larger world and also, and Sam says this is important, not freaking out and killing everything. 

Steve is okay with the perfume counters, but he could live without Bucky smelling Natasha's shoulder, frowning, and then sniffing at Sam. 

"Do I need to change deodorants?" says Nat. She changes scents a lot, but her favorite one, when she's just being Nat-their-friend, is subtle and refreshing. He's pretty sure it's not Jean Nate but it smells a little like it.

"Hey, I totally put mine on after you two beat the stuffing out of me," says Sam, from where he's face-down on the couch. Sam smells like Aqua Velva, which is kind of nice when they're on missions and they all end up leaning together desperately sleeping for five minutes before they arrive at their destination. Dependable.

"You smell okay, I guess," says Bucky, to which both Nat and Sam respond with rude gestures.

"What are you looking for?" says Steve from the cushy armchair. Bucky is really weird about the armchair. He gets mad if anybody sits in besides Steve, and he tends to unsubtly herd him into it when they get home or it's a cold, wet day outside. Steve thinks he's remembering when they were in their first apartment and there was no comfortable place to sit, not even the sagging bed. Bucky hated that apartment. When they moved out he went out and got a used armchair that smelled like old-lady perfume, hauled it up five flights of stairs to their new one, and it was Steve's chair. Bucky used to bundle him up in an old quilt of his ma's and a rubber hot bottle and his feet on an orange crate when he was sick and couldn't breathe right lying down; feed him tea and shove pillows expertly around his head. 

This armchair reclines at the touch of a button and is covered with soft velvet, and a faux mink throw that Miss Potts gave Bucky that he likes to carefully burrito Steve into. It's stiflingly warm but Steve puts up with it with much better grace than he had ever thought of doing seventy years ago.

Bucky looks over at him with a frown, then moves over and sniffs Steve's hair too. "Something isn't right," he says. 

Since this can literally mean anything between "I just sensed an attack coming with my super-enhanced paranoid assassin senses and we have thirty seconds before shit gets real" to "the bananas don't taste right, and I'm going to pout until someone explains about the banana plague, and then I'm going to _pout even more_ ", Steve stops a sigh and says, "How?"

Bucky sniffs Steve's shoulder. "You're not wearing it," he says finally. 

Natasha sits up and props her chin in her hands. She loves it when Bucky does things like that. "Wearing what?" she says.

"I left it for you," Bucky says stubbornly. 

Sam sits up with a groan. "It's too damn late to be playing this game," he complains. 

"Left it for me?" says Steve. He tries to think back. Bucky hadn't had a lot of things to leave for Steve; he'd had maybe three sets of clothes, one of which was his work clothes and more patch than cloth. The others were too big for Steve until they were too small, same as his shoes. He'd personally piled all his pillows and blankets on Steve's bed the day he'd left; Steve remembers burrowing into them at night chasing the smell of Bucky's -- 

Huh. 

"Wait a second," says Steve, fighting his way out of the armchair. Bucky perches on the arm as soon as he gets up, glowering at Nat and Sam like if he doesn't stay right there, they will steal Steve's spot and leave him with a hard kitchen chair. Steve rolls his eyes and goes into the bedroom he shares with Bucky and sometimes the others, depending on the night and how tired everybody is. He doesn't mind it when Nat and Sam crash there but he draws the line at Clint and the way he always sleeps with his bow. 

He finds the cologne that the company had sent -- an eternity ago, it seems now -- and carries it back in. "Are you talking about your cologne?" he says. He offers it to Bucky, who takes it and unscrews the top like he expects a snake to come out of the bottle. Steve bites his tongue instead of reminding Bucky that he promised his therapist he'd stop tasting things to see if they were poisonous to Steve, but Bucky just sniffs it carefully and then grabs Steve's hand and shakes a delicate amount on his inner wrist. He spreads it out carefully and sniffs Steve's skin. 

Then he frowns and puts some on his own wrist, sniffing that.

"Sam, we're late," says Natasha, getting up and picking up her shoulder bag.

"We are?" says Sam. He looks at Natasha, and then at Bucky. "Oh. Yes, we are totally late. Bye, Steve." 

As they leave Steve hears him asking Natasha what they're late for, and Natasha replying, "I'm sure Barton has gotten himself in trouble in the last fifteen minutes." Steve doesn't really care, because Bucky is lifting both his and Steve's hand to his nose and sniffing at the place where their skin brushes. 

"That," says Bucky, satisfied, and lets Steve's hand go, only to pull him down on the chair and spread the cologne on Steve's neck. He shoves his way onto the chair, half on the arm, half on Steve's lap, and buries his nose in Steve's neck. It's pretty ticklish, what with his hair and all, but Steve just shifts and gets settled comfortably. 

It's rare that Bucky feels comfortable enough to be close to anybody, even Steve, while he's awake. Asleep he's as much as a god damn octopus as ever; Steve can't remember a time when Bucky wasn't wrapped all over him in an attempt to keep Steve warm or -- after Steve joined the army -- steal some of Steve's excess body heat. But being like this, close, while they're both awake, that's special. 

And Bucky's right, it does smell right. Like Bucky's warm arm around his shoulder, bumping his cheek against Steve's before they walked out of their apartment, _lookin' swell, Stevie, looking swell_. 

"Smells kinda nice on you, I guess," says Steve.

**Author's Note:**

> Cursory research on the internet has made me conclude that manly dudes in the thirties really liked smelling like lavender and lemons, which, I would probably be into that. Tay told me I should ask one of the guys at work, but of the guys I know who are Steve Rogers' age, only one still wears cologne, and _he_ pours Old Spice on his head like my teenaged nephew sprays on Axe.
> 
> Bucky's cologne is Dunhill unless someone comes up with a better idea.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[podfic] we looked at each other the same way then](https://archiveofourown.org/works/3858880) by [lazulisong](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lazulisong/pseuds/lazulisong), [reena_jenkins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/reena_jenkins/pseuds/reena_jenkins)




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